Bless me father, for I must have sinned. It’s been 2 months since I’ve seen something good at the cinema.

It was with great reluctance that I headed along to Cineworld on Parnell St. last evening to catch a showing of James McEvoy and Angelina Jolie’s latest offering, “Wanted”. I’m all for being open minded about movies but the various trailers had left me cold, the movie striking me as little more than mindless tripe aimed at teenage boys who would no doubt be impressed with the loud noises and pretty pictures, not to mention Angelina Jolie’s bare behind, promised by the frenzied teasers. I thought, “my cinema trips are rare these days and I don’t have time to waste on this waffle”.

For once, a Hollywood trailer has delivered fully on its promise and it took me about 5 minutes to regret relenting to my friends numerous requests to give it a chance, with the only saving grace being that Cineworlds monthly pass meant that I didn’t actually have to pay full price for the misfortune of seeing this.

In advance my friend had made several requests that I see it with him, telling me that summer 2008 had yet to give us its Die Hard 4 or Transformers, ie. dumb fun, and that Wanted looked to be it. Alas, this is not the Die Hard 4 or Transformers of 2008. Don’t get me wrong, its dumb, in fact it’s “The Transporter 2″ dumb, but imagine Die Hard 4 with a protagonist as annoying and unconvincing as Jar Jar Binks and you begin to understand the problem with Wanted.

There isn’t much to the story and it occurred to me that all those scenes shot in slow motion were purely to stretch the movie out to feature length running time. The “plot” follows the Matrix formula, almost to the letter, where our cubicle occupying protagonist struggles to fit into the mundane world that surrounds him and then a hot, badass chick (Jolie) comes along and shows him that he is infact almost super human. Instead of dodging and stopping bullets he can curve them. You even have Morpheus show up, played here by Morgan Freeman, but instead of a human Oracle you have a loom.

Yes, a loom. I kid you not.

However a ridiculous but predictable story, on its own, does not mean a movie cannot be entertaining. As I hinted above, the biggest problem with Wanted is our hero. Jame’s McEvoy’s protagonist is up there with Charlie Bartlett in this years annoyance league table right from the very first syllable he utters in his irritating American accent. This is a character bereft of charisma . Worse however is that McEvoy is just not believeable and his performance quickly descends to merely shouting and grimacing at the audience.

On this point, as the movie comes to a close it actually takes the opportunity to insult the audience. The movie appears angry at us for having seen it and we are labeled “pathetic” and asked “What the f**k have you done lately?” before the ordeal is over.

I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve just wasted the 2 hours of my life and what’s pathetic is this steaming pile is being lauded by all insundry as a thrill a minute ride.

I hated this movie.

P.S. The only enjoyment I got from the evening was getting my friend to blindly accept the dare of having to go see Adam Sandler’s Zohan later in the summer.

Revenge is sweet.